During the past few weeks, we’ve heard a number of rumors about the Samsung Galaxy S IV, which will undoubtedly be the Korean company’s flagship smartphone next year. So far, most of the reports have been denied by Samsung, but some others may contain some truth.

Yesterday we heard that the Galaxy S IV would be launched with a 4.99-inch 1080p Super AMOLED touchscreen, coming with a pixel density of 441 ppi. That’s in the same league as the HTC Droid DNA for Verizon, which incidentally came out today. Using such a high-res display naturally makes sense for Samsung, even though increasing the size to almost 5 inches would bring the next Galaxy S incredibly close to the Galaxy Note line in terms of size. But who knows, maybe they’re bound to merge in a couple of years or so? Or maybe the Notes will keep growing too, so get ready for a 6-inch device next fall.

But there’s a problem. Samsung is apparently struggling to manufacture this display panel. Samsung Display can’t mass produce the part because of “issues with its evaporation process technology”, whatever that may be.

This has made SD try and source more advanced ‘LITI’ technology from 3M which should help it print OLED materials to glass more easily. But there are some problems with this technology too, and specifically with blue colored materials.

So things aren’t rosy for Samsung in this regard. Furthermore, if these issues aren’t fixed as soon as possible, they have the potential to cause a delay in the release of the company’s next flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S IV.

It’s unclear right now how big of a delay we’re talking about here. It’s also pretty unclear if anything you read above is trustworthy. That’s because this rumor du jour comes from DigiTimes, an (in)famous Asian tech outlet that loves spreading rumors. Sometimes it gets things right, but more often than not it doesn’t.

So, in fact, Samsung may not have any problems with its displays. Or it could have had some issues at some point and resolved them in the meantime. There’s just no way to know for sure. And even if the Galaxy S IV isn’t going to be unveiled in February, we probably won’t know whether that will be an actual delay due to screen tech struggles, or just that Samsung had a different announcement timeline in mind all along. After all, the Galaxy S III wasn’t ‘unpacked’ during MWC this year, but at its own dedicated event in May.